AA Ticketing Issue- Ideas?
 

I have a little issue on some tickets I bought and wanted to get the group's opinion on the best way to handle it.

I'm ticketed to fly OGG-DFW-MSY overnight on November 19th, arriving in MSY on the 20th. I subsequently booked a trip to fly MSY-ORD-PHL on November 20th, not realizing at the time that I would only be on the ground in MSY for a few hours (thought I had a whole day!) The two tickets are on separate PNRs.

So I would prefer to standby on a flight DFW-PHL on the 20th and continue my trip as planned. How likely would AA be to allow me to do this?

I know to do this by the book would involve re-pricing both trips at great expense. It would, however, save AA the expense of flying me DFW-MSY-ORD unnecessarily.

Of course, if the answer is no I will just fly both tickets the way they are, but it subjects me to the risk of not getting to PHL when I need to.

Any ideas?

Confirmed Flight Change - $50. Offered 12-hours before departure. That's your best bet.

Changes to the outbound of any non-refundable ticket will incur the change fee and re-pricing.

One thing (among many) working against me here is that the second trip connects in ORD rather than DFW, so there is no coupon DFW-PHL already in place. It would be a voluntary reroute rather than just canceling 2 segments.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

Can we assume that you will only have carry-on baggage? If not, will AA let you short-check your baggage to DFW, instead of through to MSY?

Assume carry-on bags for this one.

HNL, I don't think Confirmed Flight Change allows changes to Origin-Destination.

I don't think you can use confirmed flight change to enable you to go from a city on one pnr to a city on another.

He is booked for OGG-DFW-MSY and MSY-ORD-PHL on 2 separate PNRs
He wants to now go from OGG-DFW-PHL and presumably return to MSY at some point. So, assuming MSY is his home airport, he is flying MSY-OGG OGG-MSY MSY-PHL, and PHL-MSY
He now wants to fly MSY-OGG-PHL-MSY (plus connections)

I guess the a possibility is to price that itinerary and apply his current tickets minus change fees to the new itinerary.

I think it might be cheaper for him to fly them as they are.

I don't have any advice on how to get AA to make the trip easier. I can give you my commiserations though. I have had a few of these in the last year and they can be nerve racking.

In February I was in RDU for the week and found out on Thursday evening I needed to be in ICN (Seoul) Monday morning. I had a Saturday morning RDU-DFW return and the only way I could make it to Seoul in time was to get the noon DFW-NRT-ICN flight on Saturday that arrived late Sunday night. I had Mrs Wyldcat drive to the airport with my suits and ran out of security kissed her and exchanged suitcases on my three hour stop in Dallas. if the RDU-DFW flight had been late, I would have been in bad shape.

Last weekend I did almost the same thing. I flew back Friday CBR-MEL-LAX-DFW arriving Friday afternoon. Then Saturday afternoon I headed out DFW-ORD-LHR-PRG for this week. If the QF flight had some problem and I was delayed in Oz overnight I would be doing another airport suitcase swap. Mrs Wyldcat HATES those...

You are correct. I was confused by the original post.

I think you're hosed, and will have to take your flights as ticketed.

Not only do you have no DFW-PHL segment, you don't even have a connection between DFW and PHL, with those stops on two different tickets.

Even if you did, you can't do a confirmed same-day change from a flight on the 20th to one on the 19th, or stand by for one. I once tried to change, both ways, from a 12:40 AM redeye to one that left at 11:30 PM. I was told no on the phone (for the confirmed) and refused for the standby at the airport. The flight I wanted to stand by left a mere 70 minutes before mine, with plenty of empty seats.

Your argument of saving them from flying you on several useless segments may sound logical, but airfares and their rules are in no way logical. That's proved by the fact that if you canceled the two tickets you're holding, and purchased the routing you want (which, theoretically, should AA less), you'd have to pay extra.

You might have a shot IF you can get a voluntary bump on the way out, and offer the simpler routing up as acceptable to you. They get a lot more flexible and logical when they're required to accommodate you.

It is likely that I will have to fly it as ticketed, but I'm going to at least ask at DFW when I get there. From what you guys are telling me, it's unlikely they will allow something like this ahead of time confirmed.

I understand their rationale. Letting me fly DFW-PHL circumvents a refare and change fee x 2.

Original routing was delayed, forcing a misconnect on both tickets.

On the first call to the EXP desk, the request was denied and referred to HNL airport staff.

HNL couldn't do it and referred me back to EXP, who rerouted the first ticket to PHL and fixed the second so that we use it to return. Guess I got a more accommodating agent this time.

Good outcome, but it could have gone either way. Hope I don't have to do this again!

Dare I ask for Original Routing Credit? :)

Sure. Just because you really didn't want to fly those extra segments ultimately you were going to. At the end it was their missconect forced you to fly what you actually wanted!

No, but a note to CS praising the excellent ground service you received is definitely in order.

Why no?